Operation Piracy

by Paul Somers

  If the inquest was dull, what Lawson had to say to me afterwards wasn’t. He was visibly simmering again, and could hardly wait to get me back to the pub for a quiet talk.

  “You know, old boy,” he said, as we settled ourselves in the bar, “I’m beginning to think there’s something very very odd about this business.”

  I agreed that almost everything was. “But what strikes you as specially odd right now?” I asked.

  “Why, this raider we’ve heard so much about—it’s a bit of a ghost ship, isn’t it? First it can’t be found where it ought to be found, and now we’re told it wasn’t seen where it should have been seen. No flare, no nothing.” He bent closer to me. “Maybe it never existed!”

  I stared at him incredulously. “But, my dear chap we know there was a raider. Harris and Quigley …” I broke off. “Just what are you suggesting?”

  “Suppose the raider was an invention?” Lawson said quietly. “Suppose it was Harris and Quigley who bumped Scott off for Attwood, and got the jewels in payment?”

  I was speechless.

  “That shakes you, old boy, doesn’t it?—but it makes plenty of sense. This way, almost all the difficulties we’ve been up against just fade out. If the whole story of the raid was a fake, then there’s no mystery about where the cruiser’s got to, no mystery about why the flare wasn’t seen, no problem of interception, no problem of knowing the arrangements aboard Wanderer. Harris and Quigley knew everything. They knew where the jewels were, they knew the lay-out of the cabins, they knew how to shut off the forecastle so that young Crisp and Wilson couldn’t put a spoke in, they knew the best way to jam the cabin doors. And there was nothing to stop them making up the story of a raider, because no one else aboard was in a position to know whether there’d been one or not …”

  “Go on,” I said.

  “Well, as I see it, this is what could have happened. The two of them had the wheelhouse to themselves. They blacked their faces, put on working overalls and berets that they’d got specially, knotted up a piece of rope so that it looked as though it could have been used for tying them, fixed up a couple of gags to be found later, and went down to the corridor with wedges they’d already made. As soon as they were down there they jammed up the doors. One of them went into Charmian’s cabin and pinched the jewel case—without speaking, don’t forget. If he’d spoken, it would have given his identity away, because she knew him—as it was, she hadn’t a clue about him. The other one shot up Scott through the door according to plan. Then they chucked the gun and overalls and berets overboard, cleaned themselves up, went back to the wheelhouse, waited a bit, came down and let everyone out, and told their story about the raider. And there you are!”

  “It’s fantastic!” I said.

  “Of course it is, but the whole affair’s fantastic—and this way, at least things fit … Look, take that business of the cruiser sailing away, when if she existed at all she must have had a perfectly good engine. I ask you, is that likely? Obviously the chaps would have wanted to make their getaway as quickly as possible. I know the suggestion is that they didn’t want their engine to be heard in case the sound of it gave something away—but that thought came from Harris, don’t forget, and I reckon it’s nonsense. It wasn’t as though the ruddy engine would have played Rule Britannia or something!—no one would have remembered the note of an engine. Besides, with a description like Harris gave, what would the engine matter? Isn’t it much more probable Harris had to say the raider had sailed away, because otherwise everyone aboard Wanderer would have expected to hear her engine—and no one had, because she didn’t exist!”

  I looked at Lawson with increased respect. This time he really had been doing some hard thinking. But objections came crowding into my mind so fast that I scarcely knew which one to raise first.

  “What about Harris’s bruised cheek?” I asked. “Someone must have hit him.”

  “Just corroborative detail, old boy. It wasn’t much of a bruise—he could easily have got Quigley to dish it out. It would have been a small price to pay for all that dough.”

  “H’m! But, look, their behaviour afterwards was all wrong. If Harris and Quigley had been in on it, would Harris have agreed so readily that the raiders must have known all about the course and the sailing time and so on? Wouldn’t he have tried to put us off that line?”

  “How could he?—it stuck out a mile, as you said, and anyone could have given us the technical stuff. If he’d pretended you were wrong, and someone else had said you were right, that would merely have made us suspicious of him.”

  “At least he didn’t have to volunteer the information that there was a cargo ship passing at the time.”

  “Didn’t he? It would have looked pretty queer if he hadn’t mentioned it, and the police had found out about it from the Northern Trader herself as they easily might have done. I reckon he had no choice.”

  I was silent for a moment. Then I said, “Well, there’s another thing—if Harris and Quigley had been given the job of killing Scott, wouldn’t they have wanted to make sure he was dead before they cleared off?”

  “Perhaps they did. They could have unjammed his door and looked in and jammed it up again. Or perhaps they killed him first and jammed it afterwards. I tell you, old boy, everything’s covered.”

  I slowly shook my head. “A lot of the details are covered, I agree—but not the principle. The whole thing’s still based on your speculation that Scott was Charmian Attwood’s lover which I doubt. And I still can’t see Attwood as a man who’d employ crooks to do a murder for him. Leaving aside the question of whether he’s capable of it, I just can’t imagine him taking the risk. Think of the blackmail possibilities!—why, he’d have been putting himself in their hands for ever. He’d have been crazy.”

  “With a hundred thousand quid to share between them,” Lawson said, “they wouldn’t have had much need for blackmail. Anyway, they’d have been in his hands, too.”

  “But he’d have had a lot more to lose,” I said. “Position, reputation, wife, wealth—a life he enjoys. He’d never have risked throwing all that away. It simply doesn’t make sense.”

  Lawson lit a cigarette and pondered for a while. He was obviously reluctant to give up his theory, but he seemed less happy about it than he had been. Suddenly he said, “All right, old boy—I’m inclined to agree with you. Let’s scrub out the business of Attwood and a lover for the time being. Maybe it was you who were on the right lines after all.”

  “What do you mean?” I said.

  “Suppose Harris and Quigley and Scott were in it together. Three tough chaps on the make—you’ll admit there’s nothing fantastic about that. They knew about the jewels, and they decided to steal them by staging a fake raid. Then, at the last moment, Harris or Quigley shot Scott so that they wouldn’t have to share the dough with him. Just as you said, in fact, except that Harris and Quigley are in it instead of two strangers. Now that really does cover everything.”

  “What did they do with the jewels?”

  “They waited until they got back to Falmouth. Then one of them went ashore to ring the police—Quigley, wasn’t it? He could have smuggled them into the tender and hidden them somewhere on land, temporarily. Or for that matter they could still be aboard Wanderer—I don’t suppose anyone’s thought of searching the ship. Why should they?”

  I fell silent again. For the first time, Lawson really did seem to have produced a feasible reconstruction—up to a point. But I still boggled at the roles he’d cast his characters for, and I told him so.

  “Take Harris,” I said. “I agree he’s a fairly tough egg—he probably wouldn’t be a ship’s captain if he wasn’t. But if he’s a murderer, I’m a Dutchman.”

  “Then I reckon you’re a Dutchman,” Lawson said. “I didn’t tell you before, but I’ve been checking up on Harris—that’s what I was doing this morning, before the inquest. I went to see him with a yarn about wanting to do a magazine piece—what it feels like to be a yacht captain
for a rich man, that sort of thing. He wouldn’t play, not for publication, but I did get some of his life story out of him. He’s tough, all right—tougher than you think. He was in the Navy during the war, doing some of the cross-Channel commando stuff. You can bet he got pretty used to violence on that job. I can tell you something else—he’s a man with ambitions. He started his working life in a boatyard, and he’s got a passion for boats and everything that goes with them. What he really wants is to have a boatyard of his own. He said so. It’s perfectly obvious he doesn’t at all enjoy being pushed around by millionaires And a man with a tough streak will do a lot to get independence—even murder.”

  “Well, I still can’t imagine Harris doing it,” I said. “And what about Quigley? Now there’s a likeable young chap, if ever I saw one. Can you see him as a murderer?”

  “I can see almost anyone as a murderer,” Lawson said, “if the stake’s big enough …” The phone rang outside, and he waited to see if the call was for us, but it wasn’t. “The trouble with you, old boy,” he said, “is that you’ve got too much faith in human nature. Quigley looks innocent enough, I agree, but he’s probably under Harris’s influence, and anyway that babyface stuff doesn’t mean a thing. Never trust a face, old boy.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m not convinced—though I admit it’s quite a theory you’ve got hold of … What are you going to do about it?”

  “Somehow,” Lawson said earnestly, “we’ve got to prove that the story of the raider was a fake. I’m absolutely certain it was, and there must be some way …”

  He broke off, checked by a loud disturbance in the corridor. A chap named Ffoulkes, a Morning Herald man who was also staying at the Anchor, suddenly rushed past the open door of the bar as though a devil were after him.

  “Something must have happened,” I said, and went to the door. “What’s the hurry, Bill?” I called out.

  He was already in his car. He yelled back, “They’ve traced the boat that held up Attwood!” and roareed away.

  I looked at Lawson. I must say, after the first second or two he took it pretty well. He even managed a rather sickly grin. He finished his drink with a deliberation that Drake would have envied, and said, “Well, even Homer rods, old boy. I suppose we’d better go and see what all this is about.”

  Chapter Seven

  Word had got around pretty fast, and there were already a dozen reporters waiting at the police station when we got there. Not much had come out so far in the way of facts, but what had emerged had been sufficient to create an air of lively expectancy. It seemed that a man had called at headquarters and reported that his boat had disappeared, and from his description of it it had sounded very much like the raiding cruiser. He’d had a girl with him, and the two of them had been closeted with Anstey and his henchmen for nearly an hour and were still there.

  We waited as patiently as we could, and just before three they came out. The man was tall, thirty-ish, curly-haired, and extremely good-looking in a bronzed, film star sort of way. The girl was a synthetic blonde in her twenties. Her face wasn’t anything special but she had a most shapely figure, and she was got up to look an eyeful in the briefest of shorts and a tight cotton sweater. Both of them looked pretty browned off, and the man seemed rather dismayed to find so many reporters waiting. I think he’d have walked straight past us if we hadn’t closed in and more or less blocked their passage.

  There followed the kind of collective interview I’ve never much liked, with everyone firing questions at once in a disorderly way, but little by little we got the story sorted out. The man’s name was Guy Mellor. He was, he told us, in an accent that matched the old school badge on his blazer pocket, a sales representative for a London firm called Cricklewoods who built marine engines. He owned a cabin cruiser called Mary Ann—a thirty-footer, with a dark blue hull, a small tanned sail, and an open cockpit aft. He’d brought her to Cornwall from the Solent, a fortnight previously, and had left her at a place called Gillan Creek, an inlet near the mouth of the Helford river. “You see,” he said, with a slightly embarrassed glance at his companion, “we’d planned to do a fortnight’s cruise to the Scilly Isles, starting to-day.”

  At that point Lawson caught my eye, gave a huge wink, and murmured out of the corner of his mouth, “Once aboard the lugger and the girl is mine!”

  Someone asked if we might have the young lady’s name. Mellor hesitated, but the girl replied promptly, “Gloria Drage.”

  Then Mellor took up the story again. They’d left London by car that morning at crack of dawn, hoping to get Mary Ann away well before midday, while there was still enough water in the creek to float her, and make Penzance before nightfall. But when they’d reached the creek they’d been dismayed to find that the boat wasn’t there. They’d searched around for a bit but they hadn’t been able to find any trace of her in the creek and in the end they’d come and reported their loss to the police. It was only then that Mellor had learned that his boat was similar to one the police were looking for in connection with the Attwood raid. Mellor had known next to nothing about the raid—he’d been in Belgium for a week on his firm’s business and all he’d seen about the incident was a small paragraph in a French-language paper. When he’d got back to London, the previous afternoon, he’d been too busy packing for the holiday to spend time catching up on newspapers. Gloria said she’d read something about the raid, in the Sketch, but only some headlines, and she hadn’t thought much about anything. She had an excruciatingly affected voice, with Cockney undertones.

  There were a lot more questions we wanted to ask, but Mellor said they simply must get something to eat as they’d had no lunch, and after that they’d arranged to meet the police at a little place called Manaccan near Gillan Creek and show them where Mary Ann had been moored, so if there was anything else perhaps we could see him there. There’d be plenty of opportunity to talk, he added ruefully—it looked as though he might be around for some time! At that, Gloria’s expression grew very sulky. We went with them to their car—a vintage and obviously treasured Bentley that was exactly what I’d have expected Mellor to have. It was crammed to capacity with kitbags, suitcases, gumboots, boxes of provisions, odd bits of boat’s gear, and charts and guide books of the Scillies area. Gloria squeezed in, giving us an attractive display of brown thigh as she did so, and they drove off.

  Lawson gazed after them with a look almost of compassion in his eye. “Now that’s what I call real bad luck,” he said. “The poor chap won’t even be able to take a double room at a hotel, with all the publicity they’re going to get … A recent pick-up, I’d say, wouldn’t you? No engagement ring—and right out of his class. Probably a factory hand.”

  “You’re a snob, Lawson,” I said. “Anyway, has this anything to do with the story?”

  “Not a thing, old boy—just a few reflections on the hazards of life! Let’s go and see what Anstey has to say.”

  “Anstey was visibly relived that there’d been a positive development in the case at last. He said he’d no doubt at all that Mary Ann and the raiding cruiser were one and the same boat, and he hoped they’d find some useful clues at the creek. When he left for Manaccan half an hour later with a carload of his men, a long convoy of newspaper cars followed him. It was about fifteen miles from Falmouth to Manaccan, much of it by narrow and winding secondary roads, but with a police motor-cyclist riding ahead to warn holiday cars of our approach we got through without difficulty. The Bentley showed up at the tiny village soon after we arrived, followed almost at once by Bruce Attwood and Harris who’d been summoned from Wanderer, and presently Mellor led the whole party to the creek. The tide was low, and the river had dried right out, leaving no more than a trickle of water to mark the twisting channel. On either side of the channel stretched an expanse of flat mud, dotted with stones and patches of yellowish-black seaweed and a few lazy swans. The creek was about a hundred yards wide and was flanked by steep red-earth banks and tall conifers, with green fields sloping up behind t
hem. A thin ribbon of road ran close beside the north shore, but the place where the cruiser had been left was hidden from the road by a screen of bushes. The exact spot was a tree-fringed bight, well off the fairway and very quiet. It was easy to understand now why none of the local cottagers had reported seeing a boat that answered to the raider’s description, for the cruiser would only have been visible to someone walking down through the trees, and there was no path. It was equally understandable that no passing yachtsman had remembered and reported it, for Mellor explained that he’d left it anchored fore and aft with its bows pointing towards the fairway, and at that angle it would have looked much like any other boat. To get a good view, a yacht would have had to come right in, a pointless and possibly hazardous operation, since we gathered that even at high water the bight was pretty shallow.

  Mellor pointed out Mary Ann’s dinghy, which should have been drawn up under the bank and tied to a tree root, as he’d left it, but instead was sitting out in the mud, with its anchor down, in the spot where the cruiser ought to have been. Then the police got to work. They asked us to stand well back on dry ground while they investigated along the foreshore but they kept Attwood in formed of what was happening and we stuck with him. It wasn’t long before they found quite a lot of interesting marks. In addition to a short keel mark at the edge of the mud where Mellor had drawn the dinghy out of the water, there was a second, longer mark where it had been dragged back in again. Mellor and Harris had a brief technical discussion with Anstey about tides, and everything seemed to fit. Mellor, it appeared, had left the dinghy late at night at the top of a high tide. If it had been moved in the evening of the day Wanderer had sailed, which was ten days later, the tide would have been appreciably lower so there’d have been farther to drag it.

  Other things fitted too. Around the dinghy marks there were a lot of footmarks, and they hadn’t all been made by Mellor’s gumboots. Some were of other gumboots—two different pairs, Anstey thought. The picture was growing clearer. There was a little discussion about how the raiders could have got the dinghy out to the cruiser, since Mellor had hidden his own pair of oars deep in the undergrowth and they were still where he’d left them, but the view was that a good push-off and a little hand paddling would have been quite sufficient to take the dinghy to Mary Ann across the placid water of the bight.